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Industrial symbiosis represents a collaborative approach in which different industries exchange materials, energy, water, or by-products to create mutual benefits. By leveraging interconnected systems, industrial symbiosis enhances resource efficiency, reduces waste, and lowers environmental impacts. This process is central to advancing sustainability goals, supporting climate resilience, and accelerating the transition to a circular economy. More information on industrial symbiosis can be found here.

For large-scale application and implementation of solutions to foster industrial symbiosis, standardized frameworks and practices are essential. Unlocking the potential of industrial symbioses will lead to harmonizing methodologies, fostering trust and innovation to optimize resource use, and drive industrial transformation across Europe.

The Industrial Symbiosis Standardization Roadmap emerged from the project “RISERS - A Roadmap for Industrial Symbiosis Standardisation for Efficient Resource Sharing” (http://risers-project.eu), launched under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme. The organisation of the roadmap is led by CEN and CENELEC together with DIN.

The comprehensive roadmap is intended to drive and guide standardization on industrial symbiosis in Europe. It will be developed with a network of experts and practitioners from different sectors.

Therefore, the roadmap addresses the following goals:

• Identification of challenges and opportunities for industrial symbiosis.
• Address gaps in existing standards and policy frameworks.
• Develop actionable recommendations (for whom) for fostering resource efficiency.

The roadmap focuses on key areas and cross-cutting issues which shape several working groups presented in Figure 1. While the working groups are initially defined, they remain flexible and subject to refinement during the kick-off meeting to ensure alignment stakeholder priorities.

Figure 2 shows the timeline of the project.